Abstract

The global time scale of the Stratigraphische Tabelle von Deutschland 2002 (STD 2002) combines ten time scales which were developed by specialists for single time spans. Seven have been taken from the literature but, three have been created for the Devonian, Triassic and Late Jurassic. To merge them into a single time scale it has been approached to minimize stretched or condensed time spans and to get well balanced global and regional stratigraphic units. The STD 2002 scale shows significant differences to the Geologic Time Scale 1989 (Harland et al. 1990) particularly in the Cambrian, Ordovician, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian periods. Age differences to the scale of Gradstein & Ogg (1996) exceed 10 Ma in the Permian. However, the differences to the Geologic Time Scale 2004 (GTS 2004, Gradstein et al. 2004) are moderate only and reach in maximum 1.2 Ma in the Cenozoic, 4.8 Ma in the Mesozoic, and 6.7 Ma in the Palaeozoic. The numerical ages are extrapolated or estimated and, therefore, rounded mostly to 1.0 Ma or 0.5 Ma. Instead of error bars, numerous arrows indicate inaccurate ages. However, the ages and time spans of the GTS 2004 which are rounded mostly to 0.1 Ma/m. y. suggest a high precision. Their error bars, which are calculated mostly with the maximum likelihood method are often to small to be geologically relevant.